Don’t bother trying to tell your preschooler to control her emotional expression. First of all, she probably can’t do it anyway. And second, if you forbid or attempt to curtail your child’s physical expression of emotions, you may deny her the emotion itself. Remember, your three-year-old probably doesn’t have all the words she needs to express everything she feels. If you tell your excited preschooler to sit quietly or restrain herself, you can unwittingly transform her excitement into frustration and even sadness. So try to accept and even encourage the way your child expresses emotions. Support her feelings and any nonviolent way that she expresses them, whether that means tears, kicking the floor, or bouncing off the walls with joy. As the year goes by, your three-year-old’s expression of emotions will remain very physical, but she will acquire additional tools (words) that will enable her to express her feelings in other ways. Certainly tantrums and other dramatic displays of emotion won’t disappear. But your child will begin to use words to voice her emotions, too.
